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City to consider credit card system for parking garage By Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
Soon there will be a new place to park in downtown, and a new chance to give the city a little bit of credit, too — as in your credit card. City Manager David Corliss is now projecting that the city’s new Vermont Street parking ga-
rage will be open in time for Kansas University’s first home football game on Sept. 7. When it opens, it may have a new look for downtown as well: a gated entry and exit system that will allow motorists to pay their parking fees by credit card. “We have had more patrons talking about how they don’t have coins any-
more,” Corliss said. “We are trying to increase the payment options.” City commissioners at their Tuesday evening meeting will be asked to approve about $170,000 in purchases to equip the parking garage, which is located next to the Lawrence Public Library site at Seventh and Vermont, with the gate and credit
card system. Kansas University uses a similar system on its parking garages, but it would be a first for the city’s parking system. In addition, commissioners will be asked to approve several other items related to the garage. They include:
Setting the parking rates for the garage at 20
cents per hour, which is different than other downtown parking rates. At two-hour parking meters, rates run 50 cents per hour. At 10-hour parking meters, rates are 10 cents per hour. Corliss said he feels a rate in between the two for the garage would be fair for both short-term and long-term parking.
Approving parking
enforcement hours of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the parking garage. That’s also slightly different from the hours elsewhere downtown. In the city’s two other downtown parking garages, enforcement hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and parking meters are patrolled from 9:30 a.m. to 6 Please see PARKING, page 2A
Officials question performance of city’s charter virtual schools
East meets West
By Peter Hancock phancock@ljworld.com
Special to the Journal-World
KETTY WONG, A PROFESSOR OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY AT THE KU SCHOOL OF MUSIC, will travel to Beijing for nearly a year to study the cultural effects and history of Western-style dances in China. The Kansas University researcher recently won a Fulbright award to study what it means for the Chinese to immerse themselves in the music and dance steps of faraway cultures.
KU professor wins Fulbright to study history of salsa and ballroom dancing in China nist Revolution. A Kansas University researcher recently won a Fulbright award to study what it means for different generation of Chinese to immerse themselves in the music and dance steps of faraway cultures. In September, Ketty Wong, an associate professor in the KU School of Music, will travel to Beijing, where she will stay through next June. Once in Beijing she will observe, interview and even take Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo lessons from Chinese salsa and ballroom dancers, as KETTY WONG says the idea of researching the popularity of Western dances in China came after attending a celebration of Please see CHINA, page 6A the Chinese New Year at the Lied Center.
By Ben Unglesbee bunglesbee@ljworld.com
It might not be what he was most known for, but it seems Chairman Mao was quite the dancer. In the decades before the Cultural Revolution, a campaign under the Chinese Communist Party to limit Western and capitalistic influences, many in China took up the major international dance crazes of the time: waltzes, the tango, the foxtrot, even the mambo. It’s possible that ballroom dances were taught to factory workers in the early years of the Commu-
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Lawrence resident Lindsay Lorenz returned Monday from Sofia, Bulgaria, where she competed July 27 through Aug. 7 in the 2013 Deaflympics’s women’s road cycling events, taking home with her the bronze medal. Page 3A
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Low test scores According to state assessment data, half of the students tested at Lawrence Virtual High School in 2012 failed to meet state standards in math, and 18.5 percent failed to meet state standards in reading. Both of those are significantly higher than either the district-wide or statewide averages. Math scores were also substantially
Bringing home the bronze
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Today’s forecast, page 10B
Next week is back-to-school week for students in the Lawrence school district. And for most of them, that means getting back into the routine of loading up their book bags, and either making the hike to their neighborhood school, or waiting for their parents or a school bus to haul them there. But for roughly 1,500 of the district’s students, going back to school won’t involve “going” anywhere. They’re the students enrolled in Lawrence’s two “virtual” schools – one that serves students in grades K-8 and another that caters to high school students — where students work entirely online from their homes. And while virtual school enrollment has more than doubled in the past five years in Lawrence, they remain one of the least visible parts of the local school system, in part because nobody sees the teachers and students going in and out of buildings, but also because the vast majority of those students actually live outside of the Lawrence school district. SCHOOLS District officials say they’re growing increasingly concerned about low test scores in at the schools, both of which operate as charter schools that are managed, either in whole or in part, by a private corporation based in Herndon, Va., called K12 Inc., a for-profit company that operates online schools nationwide. “I think we have some improvements to make, and I think you can look for us to be investigating how we can do a better job of that,” Lawrence Superintendent Rick Doll said.
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Vol.155/No.222 20 pages